When My Loves Reach To Me
by mihrsuri
Summary: "But we are making the world more just, you and I - by learning how to advise, how to speak" Anne, Thomas and learning how to phrase their advice to Henry. [Title adapted from a song by Hozier]


1\. Anne does not know how she keeps the tears from her eyes, the first time she finds Henry with a mistress (it is after she loses their second child, when he is avoiding her as though she has the plague, as though he cannot bear to touch her). It is Thomas who sits with her, somehow quietly understanding in a way not even George can be.

2\. She does cry, seeing Henry dote on Mistress Seymour. Why must you do this, why must you turn away from me - have you fallen out of love so quickly that my presence is poison to you.

"You must learn Anne, to shut your eyes and endure - I love the Lady Jane and I will not have you making a scene" Henry whispers in her ear and Anne's heart breaks.

She watches the lady delight in Henry's attentions, wearing his jewels and wonders that she does not perish, her heart aches so.

(The Lady Jane cannot meet her eyes)

It is Thomas - her Thomas who cannot be her Thomas in truth, she knows, it is her Thomas who proves her salvation - though the court and the people are behind her, it is Tom who is there, who listens. It is Thomas who tells her that Henry loves her still ("though your majesty he is shaming himself" he tells her once and it warms her heart, to think that there is still hope.

(Henry still visits her bed. She does not know he is terrified of the depth of his love, of how he would be if he lost her (and Tom) and how he cannot admit this to himself)).

3\. After they come together, the three of them, Henry is still scared and Jane, Jane is soothing to his fears. But when watches Thomas close himself off, Anne become a marble Queen he tries not to feel the guilt. He does, however, feel rage at the man making Thomas laugh

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"I am a commoner made a noble, my heart - I always knew how I must defer" is what Thomas tells her when she asks him, draped on top of him in their bed.

Anne had always known she was…she knew she had been lucky, even for noble girls - her father had allowed her outspokenness and encouraged her education but it had meant she had perhaps not understood just how lucky, in some ways - not until she had learned how to advise Henry without seeming to.

She leans down to kiss Thomas, who smiles and reaches his hand just so as he nips her neck and for a time there is no more talking but afterwards Anne can help but ask if he does not find it unfair and he only nods his agreement.

"But we are making the world more just, you and I - by learning how to advise, how to speak. Besides, it has always amused me that my manners are better than many Princes" which makes Anne laugh, because it is true - her raven is more learned than many, for all they might decry his blood.

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1\. It's a lie to say he doesn't get jealous - Henry does, of course he does. He had been so even when he had not known why, with Tom. But he knows, oh he knows that no one will have what he has, with Anne and Tom and that makes him smile, when he watches others looking. And because he trusts his dark haired loves.

He knows that no one has Tom's smiles, the way he melts in Henry's arms, in Anne's - the way he is in the morning, sleepy with kisses and his curls mussed with sleep. That no one else has Anne's kisses, the way she gives a soft half smile that is only for him and Tom - the way she wraps herself around him and Tom. Their children. No, he cannot look at those who look at him in envy and not feel that they should envy him.

2\. Anne hates the way Wyatt trails after her still - hates the poetry he writes in which he constructs her as he imagines instead of as she is - he has never really seen her, not from the time he decided he was in love with her and she misses the childhood playmate she once had instead of the man who casts her as having been cruelly taken from him when she was never his in the first place.

("He sent me poems and thought to flatter me and thus have my maidenhead" she tells Henry. "I only wished to be his friend and he would not accept it and thus he still thinks himself the wronged lover, yearning after me")

3\. "I want to see you love" Henry says, undoing Thomas' shirt as the bath awaits. "I want to see you and know you are mine, you and Anne"

4\. He hesitates but there is warmth and love and safety and so he does. Henry, Henry catches his breath as he watches Thomas stand before him, takes his hand and leads him to the bath.

"By God, you are so beautiful my raven" and Thomas, Thomas leans back, eyes closed in bliss as Henry kneels beside him - and while he looks to object, Anne hushes him with a soft kiss.

"Your king and your queen have decreed it so love - you cannot gainsay us"


End file.
